BHUBANESWAR: A day after the Centre issued guidelines on vaccination of teenagers aged 15 to 17, the State government clarified that those born before January 1, 2007 are eligible for inoculation. Family Welfare Director Dr. Bijay Panigrahi said both online and on-site registration facilities will be available and there will be separate queues in the existing vaccination centres for the adolescents. “As Covaxin will be administered to the adolescents, the gap between the doses will be 28 days. Camps will be set up in schools and colleges depending on requirement,” he said.
Although the Centre cleared that a co-morbid certificate is no longer required for senior citizens eligible for a booster shot, it is yet to be decided which vaccine would be administered to them. “However, they will need the advice of their doctors for the precaution dose. Apart from the elderly, the booster dose will also be administered to frontline workers. The list of places to be designated as vaccination centres is being reviewed,” he added.
The vaccination of adolescents will start from January 3 and the booster doses administered from January 10. Meanwhile, Odisha achieved yet another significant milestone in the fight against Covid-19 as the number of fully vaccinated people crossed two crore on Tuesday. Vaccination picked up momentum in the State following the global surge in Omicron cases as it went up from 1.5 lakh doses a day to 2.65 lakh doses.
As per statistics available on CoWIN portal, over 4.93 crore vaccine doses have been administered in the State so far. While 2,02,56,708 people have received two doses, 2,90,65,892 have been inoculated at least once. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik commended the hard work of healthcare workers in ensuring swift immunisation to save precious lives.